Kathy and Robert Gauthier sit in the memorial garden that Robert, a landscaper, and volunteers created at Toll Gate High School in memory of the couple’s son Andrew, who died a year ago at 16 of leukemia. The garden will be formally dedicated Sunday afternoon.

The Providence Journal / Kathy Borchers

WARWICK — A lone ornament looped around one of the branches of a fat young spruce tree behind Toll Gate High School twirled in the wind yesterday.

Shaped like hockey puck, it bore the message: “He shoots — he scores.”

It is a fitting memorial message for Andrew Gauthier, the Toll Gate sophomore and hockey player who died last year at age 16.

His bravery in his battle with leukemia, his humor, and his passion for hockey and his high school won him the affection and admiration of adults and adolescents alike –– so much so that it does not seem like almost a year since he passed.

“We will make sure that Andy is never forgotten, he is immortal,” his father, Bob Gauthier, said yesterday. There is still a proliferation of bumper stickers throughout the city that celebrate Andrew’s life with his jersey number and the message, “Number 8 lives forever.”

It seems right, then, that the grass is green and the leaves sprouting in the special garden that Andrew Gauthier’s family and friends created for him near the rear of the high school.

The garden, with its quadrangle of benches, low bushes and granite marker, has been in place since volunteers labored with love last summer. But the official dedication of the Andrew J. Gauthier Park will take place Sunday at 1 p.m.

At that time, Bob Gauthier said, the vertical granite marker that bears the bumper sticker slogan will be topped off with a plaque embossed with Andrew’s photo and a poem written by his mother, Kathy.

The public dedication ceremony comes two weeks shy of the one-year anniversary of Andrew’s death, on May 31, 2007.

The idea of the garden started with someone offering to purchase a tree in his honor, Kathy Gauthier recalled. It was easy to decide that any memorial should be on the Toll Gate campus because Andrew loved his high school, she said, and after walking the grounds the family decided to create a garden around an existing tree.

Bob Gauthier is a landscaper, and it wasn’t long before others were pitching in to plant and groom the patch of land near a walkway to the student parking lot.

Sitting there yesterday, Andrew’s parents said it is a special place that captures their son’s spirit — from its proximity to his school to the young Christmas tree on the outskirts that is so appropriate for a boy born on Dec. 25.

“He’s here,” Bob Gauthier said.

Whenever his health allowed, Andrew Gauthier, proudly donned the colors of the Toll Gate Titans to play hockey and baseball. His hockey teammates would display his jersey on the bench when hospital stays or other complications from his years of fighting the illness kept him from games.

More than 1,000 people crowded into Thayer Arena in December when his jersey was retired and, at about the same time, hundreds of friends joined the family in decorating the fledgling Christmas tree on the edge of Andy’s garden.

Kathy Gauthier said the tree-decorating celebration –– complete with hot cider, hot chocolate and cookies –– will be an annual event. And she said the family wants the small garden on the school grounds to be a place of happiness, not sorrow.

“We decided to leave that one decoration up because it suits him so,” she said yesterday, pointing to the hockey puck dangling in the boughs.

Candace Caluori, an assistant principal at Toll Gate, said the garden is already an integral part of the campus and thanks to some not-so-typical guardian angels, it will most likely always remain free of the scars of vandalism.

“It’s an extremely tranquil place for both our faculty and students,” she said, “and I think it’s always going to remain a very nice place — because I think everyone knows that it comes under the guardianship of the Toll Gate hockey team.”

Once the Gauthiers were spotted behind the school yesterday, student after student came up to hug them or clasp their hands.

“Andy will always be with us,” Bob Gauthier said. “This garden is a good place for anyone to come anytime they’re feeling lonely, or if they’re thinking about Andy. If someone needs to hug him, they should come here.”

The rain date for the dedication is May 25. The Gauthier family is also giving scholarships in Andrew’s name. Donations can be sent to the Andrew Gauthier Fund, 172 Gilbert Stuart Drive, Warwick, RI, 02818.

bpoliche@projo.com